Peggy O'Neil

Peggy O'Neil, born Margaret O'Neil on 16 June 1898, was an Irish-American actress whose career spanned Broadway, London's West End, film, and vaudeville. Her birth location remains uncertain — her family emigrated from Ireland to Canada around the turn of the century before settling in Buffalo, New York, and it is unclear whether she was born in Ireland or in North America. O'Neil lost both parents at a young age: her father Frederick died in a train wreck when she was nine, and her mother Mary Buckley O'Neill died three years later. She subsequently came under the care of local relatives. An uncle, Charlie Zimmerman, who worked as a music director, recognized her artistic ability and introduced her to theater. He arranged for her to sing in the chorus of The Sweetest Girl in Paris in 1910, the opening production at the newly rebuilt La Salle Theater in Chicago, where she performed as a child chorister.

O'Neil's Broadway career extended from 1907 to 1927 and encompassed a range of productions. Her credits included the revue Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, the revue Shubert Gaieties of 1919, the musical Tumble In, By Pigeon Post, and the play The Blue Flame. She had attended a Loreto convent school during her childhood, and her Irish background would prove central to a pivotal moment in her professional life. In 1919, a London producer, Robert Courtneidge, traveled to the United States specifically seeking a red-haired actress with a distinctly Irish quality for a London production. He met O'Neil and cast her as Paddy in Gertrude Page's Paddy the Next Best Thing, which opened at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1920. O'Neil's affinity for London led her to make the city her permanent home, a decision that also delayed her engagement to American millionaire Joe Moran.

Her London years brought a wide range of stage work. She appeared in J. M. Barrie's The Little Minister and What Every Woman Knows in 1924, and in Mercenary Mary at the Hippodrome, London, in 1925. Edgar Wallace's The Flying Squad followed at the Lyceum Theatre in 1928, and she reprised her role in Paddy the Next Best Thing in a revival at the Garrick Theatre in 1929. Her stage work also took her to Dublin, where she performed at the Theatre Royal and the Gaiety Theatre, and to Birmingham and Brighton in later years.

In October 1920, O'Neil survived a reported assassination attempt when a box of chocolates sent to her was found to contain arsenic and strychnine. Her dog died after consuming the poisoned confection, but no culprit was ever identified. The following decade brought her into contact with another landmark event: at the National Radio Exhibition at Olympia, London, in the autumn of 1928, she encountered John Logie Baird's television apparatus and was invited to perform Irish songs, an appearance credited with helping to popularize the new medium. In April 1930, at the Ideal Home Exhibition in Southampton, she took part in what has been described as the first television interview.

O'Neil also pursued a career in film, appearing in small supporting roles from 1913 onward and accumulating credits in 23 feature-length and short films by 1938. Her later film work included The Razor's Edge in 1946, a body-doubling role for Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc in 1948, and Let's Dance in 1950. Separately, she exhibited oil paintings at the Wertheim Gallery and Burlington Gardens. The 1930s brought significant hardship: in 1935 she declared bankruptcy, attributing the situation to inexperience and carelessness.

From the mid-1940s, O'Neil suffered increasingly severe arthritic pain that eventually confined her to a wheelchair and prevented her from leaving home. She died impoverished on 7 January 1960 at Middlesex Hospital in London from heart failure, having never married and leaving no children. She was buried at St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, with funeral costs covered by the Actors' Benevolent Fund. No gravestone marks the site. In 1921, the waltz Peggy O'Neil, written by Harry Pease, Ed. G. Nelson, and Gilbert Dodge and published by Leo Feist, had been composed in her honor; the song became widely popular and was covered numerous times.